Forums → WEPR → Cancer- Forever a plague or future tool of medic

This was for my cancer biology class I have every Monday night. I asked my teacher what she thought about the subject. Her PhD thesis was on how obesity can increase someone's possibility of skin cancer... apparently there's a correlation. So, she knows something about cancer. Anyway, she said that realistically she didn't think it would be all that possible to harness it like that but she wasn't counting it out. She felt like the best part of her discussion was the thought of how when something is differentiated it has more control over itself and it's proliferation... but when it's regressed to a cancer phase it becomes undifferentiated to an extent and in doing so loses its control. If we could learn to make them differentiate(specialize) again, then they would be more easily treated and/or removed.

Here's what I was talking about with using radio waves to kill cancer.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/10/60minutes/main4006951.shtml

just as some people are wary of the flu shots, I'd think that some people would be wary of inducing cancer in their bodies.

What is your opinion?

Would you undergo such a treatment?

Do you think this is a good thing? Any comments at all?

I should take the time to listen to the whole talk, but as a matter of trivia, there is such a thing as cancer of the skeletal (striated) muscle: it's called a rhabdomyoma. It's rare but it exists. Furthermore a subtype of rhabdomyomas are cardiac i.e. cancer of the heart. These fall under the class of cancers referred to as sarcomas, which are tumours of the mesoderm i.e. bone, fat, muscle, connective tissue, bone marrow.

She makes the observation that a lot of the time cancer is a product of damage. Melanoma is the product of too much sun.

forgive my double... She didn't say that she KNEW that her claims were true. I do believe she used the word "HYPOTHESIS." A hypothesis is what you think will happen, but are going to test to make sure. You form an experiment to test the hypothesis. You then conduct multiple trials and see if your hypothesis was right. If it wasn't, then you rework your experiment to see if it can be done some other way. The whole point of science is to find out how things work and how to manipulate them. You can't really find/discover something when you already knew it was there. People had stories about the world being flat back in the old days, and for all they knew it was true/highly possible. You don't go forward without going somewhere you've never been (the unknown) until you've come full circle(learned everything there is to learn).

If you give me a hypothetical experiment of something new you want to test and 30 minutes to think about it, then I can probably come up with several possible catastrophic side effects.

You don't work by yourself in this field... you have other scientists and people you discuss things with. If it were me, I'd have talked to everyone I could have before I got up there and made myself look like a complete idiot. It might only ever be a pipe dream, but I do know we need to pursue all venues we can for cancer research. I don't know the stats of survival vs death with cancer, but I'm not sure I know anyone who has ever survived cancer.... I do know two grand parents and several friends of the family who lost that fight. I've been to the "Relays for Life"... and I've seen all of those candles in the bags. There have been all sorts of such arguments against all kinds of historical scientific breakthroughs. Everyone knows there are risks with trying things on humans... that's why we test on animals first...and extensive research is done before then. Are there still risks? yea.... there are always risks in everything. I understand that you have a large amount of unease w/ someone so young, but an equivalent to a zombie/rabid albino apocalypse I don't see happening.... I just see about the same thing as a vaccine virus gone bad happening.

That vid was something like 2003 or 2006. She would already have her PhD by now regardless of the year. I haven't looked up anything on her past what I've seen on the vid.

....lol forgive this double. I didn't expect the medical ninja to show up and ninja my post. She acknowledges possibility of muscle cancer, while briefly explaining how rare it is. Just for those who aren't going to watch it.

I just listened to her earaching monologue about her grandma and ambitions... I left off most posts though so sorry if I'm repeating someone/something.

Basically what she's talking about is intriguing. Though I must agree with Strop on one point:

What I want to know is in what way this model differs from stem cell research. I don't quite understand the potential applications, or their advantages here, I was hoping for some concrete examples.

Stem cell research eh, well, I think it seems a bit overdone about the drama with the unborn babies, can't we just try it with test tube babies when we have the proper tech to sustain a babies life without any uterus or human systems. These babies would already not be naturally grown. It almost is kind of like artificial life open to help us with research. It may seem a bit heartless, but what happens to test tube babies isn't natural, and it seems like deception, to me of course. I do apologize if my opinion offends any of you but I just don't think that test tube babies really are how natural things like reproduction are supposed to be.

Where did I mock them?